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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27927211">Sanctum</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harpokrates/pseuds/Harpokrates'>Harpokrates</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fantasy, Gen, M/M, automatons, writing stories about my dolls</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:56:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,981</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27927211</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harpokrates/pseuds/Harpokrates</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
      <p>I occasionally write things about my dolls (which I collect and make up stories about, like a mature adult). This is what I've been doing instead of updating my many unfinished works.</p><p>Have fun.</p>
    </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I occasionally write things about my dolls (which I collect and make up stories about, like a mature adult). This is what I've been doing instead of updating my many unfinished works.</p><p>Have fun.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kreuz watched the man in the shabby coat fumble with a handful of coins in his pocket, and decided he was just a spendthrift, not an elaborate con.</p><p>He was trying to haggle down the price of a cup of tea for christssakes. Kreuz glanced at the cup dispassionately as the man began heaping sugar into it. It turned from vaguely brown water to vaguely brown sludge.</p><p>No, the only person getting conned here was the shabby man himself.</p><p>The man took a sip and smiled in the depths of his hood. Kreuz's teeth ached, despite the fact that he hadn't had sugar, or, indeed, teeth, for years now.</p><p>He refocused on the market.</p><p>It was a fairly typical day: not necessarily bustling, but busy. Cloudcast. It was the kind of day one struggled to describe for all it's mundanity. A child giggled sharply. Across the square, a horse snuffled. Kreuz exhaled out of habit.</p><p>There was a shout to clear the way, and both Kreuz and the shabby man looked up at the newfangled steamcarriage slowly creaking across the plaza on the rails embedded into the cobblestone. Well, Kreuz looked up from his navel gazing, and then down to the market square below.</p><p>His position on the roof of the palace afforded him a vantage literally out of reach of his human colleagues. It was out of sight, too, as his pallor made him resemble one of the many gargoyles more than anything man shaped lurking on the roofline. He rubbed at his left eye. The glass lens that allowed him to focus so finely was scratched. It wasn't enough to hinder him, but it was enough to be annoying. He'd have to get it fixed the next time a telescopist came to court.</p><p>The horse whinnied. The car backfired. The child screamed.</p><p>Kreuz was a hundred meters away and twice that in the air. He couldn't do anything even if he wanted to. He had to make himself want to.</p><p>The horse screamed as it skittered away from it's rider, knocking the cart it was dragging sideways and sending it careening at the child, who shrieked in terror. Kreuz reached his hand out like he could do anything by the gesture.</p><p>A human wouldn't have caught it. Despite his focus on the child, Kreuz saw the shabby man's fingers twitch. The child stumbled back, and the cart clipped the edge of her skirt.</p><p>Her wail erupted into a scream as her mother snatched her off the ground and bundled her into her arms, cooing comforting nonsense. Her husband began screaming at the owner of the cart, who shouted abuse back, in between jabbing his thick finger at the car. The passengers peered out of the thick glass windows, muttering amongst themselves in relief.</p><p>Kreuz ignored all of them, and scrambled down the wall as quickly as he could. The shabby man stood in the midst of the chaos, and drained his tea, leaving the cup on the table. Kreuz cussed, and dropped. He hit the ground badly, and could hear his right knee blow out. He ignored it, and sprinted for the marketplace.</p><p>The shabby man was gone by the time he got there, but Kreuz could smell the slick smell of sugar leading into one of the alleys. He ducked into the ratmaze of old construction. His nose pricked with the stink of confined bodies, of the biological existence of too many humans in too small an area.</p><p>Blood, too. It surrounded him, but he could pick out the distinct threads of stale tea and spellery.</p><p>Kreuz followed the trail until he rounded a corner and spotted the shabby man.</p><p>He was leaning heavily against the brick wall, smearing another layer of grime over his filthy coat. His fingers were gaudily bejewelled, and vanished into his hood to press on his eye. Kreuz smelled fresh blood.</p><p>He was fairly average, but it was the sort of average that he tried to disguise through eccentricity. His unfashionable long hair spilled out of his hood onto his chest. His shirt was stained and torn. It hurt Kreuz's eyes to look at it. The collar of his shirt fell open at the neck: no cravat or tie either.</p><p>He glanced up, and met Kreuz's gaze with the glint of a pale eye. The other was swollen shut.</p><p>"Oh hello," he said airily. "Sorry, is this your corner? I'll only be a moment."</p><p>Kreuz pulled his ironlock out of its sheath and leveled it at the man.</p><p>"Ah." He slowly pulled his coat open, displaying the torn lining, and a small handful of moth holes in his shirt. "If you're trying to rob me I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed. I just spent my last tencent on some tea."</p><p>It had been syrup, but that was semantics.</p><p>"Hands by your ears." Kreuz said. His voice buzzed with an almost imperceptible metallic tinge. </p><p>"I really don't have anything." The man insisted, raising his hands over his head.</p><p>There was a certain familiarity about him, perhaps his stance or his bearing, that made Kreuz suspect he was either an estranged member of some noble lineage, or a bastard of the same.</p><p>"Turn around."</p><p>The shabby man complied, but not before twitching his hand. Kreuz felt the familiar tug of spellery, but resisted the irresistible urge to move. </p><p>The man gasped in pain, his already injured eye screwing even more tightly shut.</p><p>"You're only making things worse for yourself." Kreuz informed him, digging the flintlock into his back with one hand, and pulling his hands down into a set of manacles with the other.</p><p>"Ah." The man said, when Kreuz's hand closed around his wrist. "You're one of those mechanical men, aren't you?"</p><p>Kreuz didn't respond. The man was taller than he was, but Kreuz was unnaturally strong, and had no trouble manipulating him.</p><p>"I saw Von Kempelen's Automaton Turk in Vienna a few years ago." The man continued. "Really masterful work. They shooed me away when I kept heckling the plays."</p><p>"There was a grandmaster hidden inside the table. Walk."</p><p>"Really?" The shabby man twisted his head 'round, trying to look at Kreuz. "I never would have guessed."</p><p>Something in Kreuz felt a little silly. Here he was, leading the type of man who shouted over chess by the cuffs, on suspicion of spellery. The more sensible part of him ignored it. He wasn't like a human, to mistake things he saw. The man had performed a spell, ostensibly to save a child, but even evil men were capable of occasionally kindness.</p><p>"Keep moving." </p><p>Kreuz led the man through the brick maze. They were about to emerge into daylight when Kreuz felt the tug of failed spellery. The shabby man gasped in pain and stumbled on his step.</p><p>"Get up, you—"</p><p>Kreuz didn't manage to finish his sentence before half the wall fell on him. His instincts from a lifetime of being a frail human had his arms up over his head before the first brick hit, but even his reactions couldn't clear him in time. He took the blows, and ended up half buried in the rubble.</p><p>"Sorry about that," the shabby man managed, one hand cupping his bleeding nose. He sagged against the adjacent wall. "But I really can't have you arresting me."</p><p>Kreuz's eyes blazed.</p><p>Death had deadened his emotions. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt joy, although satisfaction and pride weren't unfamiliar yet. Similarly, frustration was a common friend. Rage on the other hand…</p><p>"I'll kill you," he hissed through gritted teeth. "I'll kill you!"</p><p>The man tilted his head at Kreuz, an eyebrow cocked. "Well."</p><p>"You bastard!" He howled. It was like a burst damn. Perhaps the spellery had done something, or perhaps it was simply the result of years of staring dead eyed at the Baron Commissioner and his officers and pretending to care about their petty intrapersonal politics. Whatever it was, in that moment, all Kreuz wanted to do was to wringe the shabby man's neck until it snapped under his hands.</p><p>He yanked, felt something break, but his arm came loose and he barely bothered aiming before he emptied his shot at the man.</p><p>He could hear the man's eye pop and bleed under his eyelid, and he barely managed to bite back a gasp of pain, but the bullet slowed, until the shabby man caught it in his palm like it was a gentle toss.</p><p>His hand shook badly enough that the bullet rattled out of his hand and clattered to the brick.</p><p>"Ah," he managed, but his voice was thick. </p><p>Kreuz couldn't untangle his own dull emotions enough to decide if he felt guilty or rapturous.</p><p>"How rude." A dribble of blood leaked from under the shadow of his cloak. Kreuz watched it trail down the shabby man's cheek until it landed next to the bullet with a fat plop. "I never did anything to you."</p><p>"Bastard," Kreuz spat. "Bitch."</p><p>The shabby man managed a weak smile, and kicked a brick Kreuz's way. It landed on the top of the pile with a clatter.</p><p>"Well." He said again, visibility wincing as he shrugged.</p><p>The shabby man was long gone by the time Kreuz managed to dig himself out of the rubble. His right arm dangled from it's socket, and he could tell even without looking that the complex series of gears that allowed him to move were all but destroyed. The arm aside, he was largely undamaged. The ivory that made up the majority of his body was slightly chipped, but otherwise unharmed, and the exposed metal that made up the rest of him looked new.</p><p>Kreuz pushed himself to his feet, feeling more like a pocket watch, or the mechanical bird His Majesty kept, than a man.</p><p>He flexed his fingers, watching them move without really feeling it.</p><p>Then he shook his head, and returned to the palace.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Sulliman." His name came out as a short growl. It wasn't a shout, but it didn't need to be.</p><p>"Viscount." Sulliman only barely remembered his manners, and swept into a frankly pathetic bow. "Viscount Altham. Can I help you?"</p><p>"Come." Altham grunted, jerking his head for Sulliman to follow. He marched off towards his rooms in the Palace. Sulliman scurried after him, distinctly aware that, by the stares he was getting, he was wearing a bit more dirt than was polite. He kept his head ducked low and let his hair fall over his injured eye.</p><p>It wasn't recoverable, in all likelihood. Too much spellwork in too short a period of time, and the great tipping scales of the universe had decided to latch onto his eye for this round.</p><p>Altham opened the door for him and gestured him inside. Sulliman half expected a fist between his shoulder blades, but Altham simply locked the door and sat on the overstuffed chaise lounge in front of the dead fireplace.</p><p>"Light it." He grunted.</p><p>Sulliman knew what he wanted, but took the matchbook of the mantle instead.</p><p>"With the spellery."</p><p>Sulliman closed his eye and exhaled, then grit his teeth together so he couldn't bite off his tongue by accident.</p><p>He centered himself, willed it, and felt the dull burst of heat in front of his face as a background echo to the feeling of the last scraps of his eye imploding in on itself.</p><p>He staggered, sank to his knees, but he managed to keep his dignity enough to not retch all over the carpet.</p><p>"Well?" Altham lit a pipe, huffing a cloud of foul smoke around his head.</p><p>Sulliman groaned in response.</p><p>He raised a shaking hand to his face—it hurt too much to touch, but the sensation of the eye at least being covered was comforting.</p><p>"Girl in the plaza." He managed to whisper. "Carriage nearly hit her."</p><p>"You're pathetic." Altham tapped out the ashes. "But I think you're well aware of that by now."</p><p>"Oh certainly."</p><p>"What are the Imperalists planning?"</p><p>"Prison break. The old tower."</p><p>Altham grunted. "Baron Redwren is there. Dissent against His Majesty. It shouldn't succeed. I have an audience in a week. I plan to advocate for his release."</p><p>"You plan on becoming his cellmate?" Sulliman touched the corner of his eye. His fingers came away bloody.</p><p>Altham threw the ashtray at him. It bounced off his shoulder and hit the ground in a puff of ash. So much for the carpet. "Of course not, you fucking idiot. I plan on letting him be executed. Once His Majesty is murdered, Redwren will be their first choice for Emperor."</p><p>"Ruins your plans, I'm sure." Sulliman was pushing a slap.</p><p>"I need them to rally around me. I'm too valuable for His Majesty to imprison outright—I have grandmother to thank for that—so I can sow dissent without fear of having my nails ripped off by some braindead guard."</p><p>Sulliman glanced down at his own hand, where his nails had just finished growing back. "I can't recommend the stay."</p><p>"How long until you can cast spellery?"</p><p>Sulliman shrugged. "A week. Perhaps. The girl must have been important, to cost an eye."</p><p>"What will you lose if I make you spell regardless?"</p><p>"My back." Sulliman. "Probably. More scarring."</p><p>"Hn." Altham snuffed out his pipe. Sulliman felt around blindly until he found the ashtray, then stood and handed it to him.</p><p>"One week."</p><p>"I understand." Sulliman turned to leave, then paused.</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"Is there an Automaton in the guard?"</p><p>"One of those clockwork things?" Altham tapped the mouth of his pipe on his bottom teeth. "No. The telescopist made one, but I'm told that it was a fanciful delight for His Majesty. It's locked away somewhere. He brings it out to sing for parties sometimes."</p><p>"Sing?"</p><p>"It's a bird."</p><p>Ah. Wrong automata.</p><p>"Clean yourself up. You're disgusting." Altham brushed past him on his way out. Sulliman was taller than him, but Altham was well bred and well fed. He outweighed Sulliman by a good five kilo, not that Sulliman could do anything to him regardless.</p><p>Even if he survived assaulting a member of the nobility, Altham's warmonger Empress grandmother would demand that he be executed, and threaten an invasion until she got her way.</p><p>Instead of doing the right thing—or perhaps it was just the less wrong thing—and offing himself for the good of the country, Sulliman hunched over the little washstand and squinted at himself in the mirror.</p><p>The Sulliman he recognized looked back at him from underneath a layer of dirt and blood and trauma. Well, minus an eye.</p><p>He didn't bother to mourn it. He'd be dead within a year, withered away to skin stretched around a skeleton.</p><p>Was it still suicide if one took that long to die? It wasn't like he was pulling the knife himself. He was just… letting someone else do it for him. Sulliman watched himself in the firelight until his dark thoughts bled away to the quieter parts of his mind.</p><p>The Automaton must have been a vigilante—some creation of a vengeful victim of spellery, with the sole purpose of killing witches. Or perhaps he was a member of some sort of secret police. The Imperalists talked about them enough during their coffee room screaming matches.</p><p>Sulliman wet a rag and carefully wiped away the blood and street grime. The basin turned dark and cloudy. Now that the blood was cleared away from his eye, he could see the full extent of the damage. It was blackened and bruised, and his eyelid sank into the socket. A normal injury, on a normal person would recover: the mottled blue and green would fade back to flesh, the blood would stem. But this wasn't, and he wasn't.</p><p>Sulliman shifted slightly, peering over his shoulder. No blood on his coat, which was a good thing. He slipped out of it and dropped it to the floor in a puddle of patchwork silk.</p><p>Standing in shirtsleeves, he could see the old scars on his back bleeding through the fabric. He drew air through his teeth and pulled his shirt off, then tended those wounds too.</p><p>It looked as off some great beast had gripped him by the shoulders and scraped downwards. For all he knew, whatever force kept the grand scales of the universe in check was some sort of animal. A hunter of those foolish enough to try and make something from nothing without offering something else in its place. Ammit for the modern world.</p><p>Sulliman scoffed at himself and pulled his shirt on over the bandages.</p><p>"Oh, look at you." He muttered at his reflection. He picked up the filthy basin and placed it next to the door, then slipped out of the room as subtly as he could. The rumors, when they flew slowly enough for him to catch them, placed him as either the estranged bastard brother of Altham, or his lover. Both were equally disgusting and equally wrong, but he was more concerned about being jumped and stabbed for indecency, or whatever they were calling it these days. Altham was, of course, immune from everything except treason, thanks to dear granny, but Sulliman, as his partner in crime, was fair game.</p><p>Well, having his teeth kicked in was better than what would happen to him if Altham ever got bored and told His Majesty that the scruffy blond man in the tattered vest was actually a witch, and not a dalliance.</p><p>Death never came quickly for witches.</p><p>He had plans, of course, if such a thing happened before he expired. He'd cure a few dozen guards of the consumption that ran rampant through their ranks on the way out, perhaps, or bring another prisoner back from the brink of death, although that lacked mercy.</p><p>He scoffed at his own dark thoughts, and buttoned his coat.</p>
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